Archive for October 2nd, 2007

We decided to make the project to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Star Wars movie. Our club members are making several Star Wars based projects to fly at Plaster Blaster VI, or Plaster Wars. We decided to make the project challenging in several ways. The first is just the massive size of the rocket. It is over 21â€™ long, with a wingspan of over 19â€™.

We opted to use a cluster of four motors to emulate the “real” X-wing, and positioned the motors in the wing pods. The real challenge was to make the wings move in flight, from the “attack” position, or extended to the “landing” position, or folded. This proved to be quite a mechanical feat. We started be laying out the rear fuselage section and wing root sections in CAD, then had RMS Laser and Routing Services CNC route all the fuselage and wing root components.

The fuselage ends and wing root sections are cut from 3/4″ Baltic Birch, while the internal stricture is cut from 3/8″ Baltic Birch. The “wing box” assembly, or center of the fuselage, contains the electrical motor and gear / chain drive system that moves the wings, along with the center supports for the wing panels.